On Thu, 2002-10-31 at 10:32, Jaromir Dolecek wrote:
> There are some problems with vmmon module (i.e. the vmware module).
> If space in /tmp runs out, it causes trouble. Also, you are very
> likely to make your machine unusable with mfs bigger than amount of
> physical RAM AFAIK.

aw, now it starts making sense...

> 
> If you use vmware, you need to set TMPDIR to some location with
> plenty of space (it needs to store image of the running virtual
> machine there, which is easily 100MB). I'd also recommend getting
> more memory, 128MB is likely to be too small for reasonable use
> with vmware.

I set TMPDIR to ~/tmp, now vmware still hangs, but a dialog shows saying
"VMWare workstation PANIC - NOT_IMPLEMENTED F(571):491", and exits
gracefully, terminal output is filled up with "can`t write to /tmp, file
system is full", but at least the system didnt hang or anything...

Ill go on with further investingations on vmmon.. thnx a lot :)

Germano

> 
> Jaromir
> 
> Germano Cesari wrote:
> > I modified /etc/fstab so to have mfs mounted at boot, everything works
> > fine (maybe a little faster?) but here something strange happens:
> > 
> > when I start vmware (even with a machine with only 32 megs, the one that
> > worked fine without mfs), it just goes through (trough? :-)) the POST
> > and than simply HALT the whole system (I mean the NetBSD system), in
> > just 5 secs, without all the thrashing it used to do before mfs.
> > 
> > no hdd activity, no thrashing, nothing, just a plain _dead_ OS, and in a
> > matter of seconds. I kept this mummy frozen for the whole night, but I
> > dont think it was making improvements of any sort, I just dont think it
> > was doing anything at all... isnt that puzzling?
> > 
> > is there a way to monitor whats goin on? (is the system really frozen?
> > and if so, why? when I reboot I dont have any core file). Remote
> > connections of any sort are useless, the system is just down (ping works
> > anyway)... any clue? is there a way to probe for some cpu life-signs in
> > that state?
> > 
> > Germano
> > 
> > On Tue, 2002-10-29 at 17:41, Greywolf wrote:
> > > On 29 Oct 2002, Germano Cesari wrote:
> > > 
> > > # anyway, pstat -s tells me wd0b is at 7%, so whats the need of mounting
> > > # mfs on /tmp? do this make things faster?
> > > 
> > > In a word, yes.  Any program which needs temporary files with which to
> > > work (cc, sort, others...) will see an improvement, especially on slower
> > > machines (even on my workstation which is no slug, real time for a copy
> > > from disk to mfs is about half the time for a copy from disk to disk
> > > (and yes, I picked a filesystem on which I could cache-invalidate by
> > > umounting) of a 3.5MB file.  Time for mfs -> mfs copy appears to be
> > > about half that.  The difference on disk -> disk will depend on your
> > > disks.  But I digress.
> > > 
> > > Another advantage of mfs is that it goes *poof* on a reboot or unmount,
> > > so if the system crashes and your compilers or other things (like X)
> > > have left their garbage there, unable to recover, when the system comes
> > > back, it's already gone (never mind that /tmp is usually set to get
> > > cleaned on a reboot anyway...).
> > > 
> > > 				--*greywolf;
> > > --
> > > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>            http://www.NetBSD.org/
> -=- We should be mindful of the potential goal, but as the tantric    -=-
> -=- Buddhist masters say, ``You may notice during meditation that you -=-
> -=- sometimes levitate or glow.   Do not let this distract you.''     -=-